🌊 Writing against Darkness

Reflections on writing as fighting like fire against the dark

Finally, it’s fall—my favorite season—and I’m starting to feel like I’m on the other side of the major hurdle that was my first summer as a stay-at-home mom (followed by the flurry of back-to-school activities and a major family trip). My mind can finally start attending to other things… like writing.

Writing is not only my passion and my best self-care—the thing that recharges me more than anything else—but it also feels like the best way I can respond to what’s happening in the larger world.

(Please see my recent song, “Tend Your Heart: a song about coping with news-pain,” for more of my working philosophy behind this viewpoint. I may also write an essay expanding on these thoughts soon.)

And I don’t just mean responding via the specific content of what I write. (However, I do feel that the novel I’m currently revising has a powerful relevance to some of today’s political realities, and I can’t wait to get it finished and out into the world!)

I mean that the very act of writing, itself, feels like a way to push back against the darkness of both inner depression and outer oppression.

Each time I sit down to write, I’m defying:

• the forces of patriarchy and generational trauma, because I’m pausing from childcare and chores to do something that nourishes me.

• the indoctrination of my evangelical upbringing, because I’m daring to consider my own thoughts as worthwhile.

• the discouragement of ongoing news-horror combined with ongoing survival mode (see my previous essay), because I’m creating instead of giving up.

Writing, for me, is like the magic of fire to ancient peoples: it gives me warmth and light, and it serves as a tool for nourishment, healing, and fighting against darkness.

I once knew someone who had the words “write like fire” tattooed across her chest, and I thought that was very cool. I too want to write like fire.

I want to write my heart out, defying darkness and blazing my light!

So I very much hope you will be hearing from me more often here. I’m also aiming to begin posting daily/regular “Notes” on Substack with brief logs about what writing and reading I’ve gotten to do that day, for both accountability and connection purposes.

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We need you at your brightest

Thank you for reading! And may you, too, please reach for whatever it is that feeds your soul and feels like light amidst the darkness. 💗

“We need you at your brightest,
the best version of you—
so wherever your heart leads,
please follow in pursuit.”

— (from my song “Tend Your Heart”)

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Writing News

Oh, and here’s a bit of writing news I just got today: my short story “One Marble” was accepted for publication in the magazine Appalachia Bare and is scheduled to be published there tomorrow!! This will be my first published short story!! 🎉

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